The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects
About "'The Medium is the Massage' is a look-around to see what's happening. It is a collide-oscope of interfaced situations." McLuhan's 1967 work examines the way communication occurs. Written during the Cold War, the book is eerily accurate in some predictions and thoughts. those in need of the book, here is a link to a [https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa PDF copy.] Marshall McLuhan Marshall McLuhan was born Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980). He was a Canadian Philosopher of communication theory and received a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 19421. He taught at the University of Toronto. That university created the Centre for Culture and Technology, and named him director. http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/biography/ Analysis "Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication." pg 8 This quote from McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage ''is a fairly good soundbite for the rest of the book. His argument is that media is a huge part of our everyday lives and that it is changing us even as it is being changed by us. McLuhan's idea is presented not only in his words, but also in the format which he uses to present his ideas. The book is full of images, different size texts, backwards writing and entire pages that are upside down, all of which forces the reader into an active participation with the text. In a way, this pulls the focus away from what is being ''said, ''and rather highlights ''how ''it's being said. In this way, McLuhan creates a mirror effect between his meaning and his method, his medium and his message. Privacy across social media platforms is dissolving as we continue to advance in technology. Mcluhan would support the notion of a lack of privacy in social media. According to ''The Medium is the Massage ''we are losing privacy. The Internet is instantaneous and it is always there. "The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions - the patterns of mechanistic technologies- are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electronic information retrieval..." pg 12 " 'The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.'" -A.N. Whitehead pg 6-7 McLuhan lays the first of many insights into exactly what A. N. Whitehead's words convey within the first paragraph of his book. "The medium, or process, of our time--electric technology--is shaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and reevaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing--you, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, you government, your relation to "the others." And they're changing dramatically." pg 10 "Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other." pg 24 Facebook, for example, allows for almost anyone to see what you are doing, when, where, with whom, for how long, etc. We are constantly plugged into a virtual society who uses these technologies in place of physical interactions. Will we ever be able to unplug? "There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." pg 25 I believe that our society lacks the willingness to contemplate what is actually going on and for what reasons and who is behind it. The media and social networks are a distraction, and we as a society are too easily distracted by things that do not matter. "Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories - for probing around. When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result." pg 10 This quote found in The Medium Is The Massage book is touching on the fact that this is a time for creation. Just when you think things are opposite or won't work together, they can and they do. Creating new and profound ideas, objects, and theories in our world. "Womb-to-tomb surveillance." pg 12 This is part of a sentence talking about our constant lack of privacy. This small "phrase" if you will, caught my eye. The truth behind this is incredible. We are constantly being watched and doing things that others know and see before we even realize it. Privacy over the years has become hard to find. Whether this has to do with social media, face to face, or technology itself. Cameras, gossip, people listening, the lack of appreciating a moments peace spent alone. Our world has changed in that sense. "It isn't that I don't like current events. There have just been so many of them lately." pg 70 This quote right here is on a page with an illustration. It is two young girls walking in the hallway out of a classroom. I believe it is one of the girls saying it to the other. We tend to forget that we live such chaotic and busy lives. Sometimes we ask for more, that this life isn't enough and we want more to happen and more to go on. When that wish is granted, that is when we realize that life is so fast past and we need time to handle the things that are thrown at us. Things happen all the time. Life is always happening. "Education must shift from instruction, from imposing of stencils, to discovery-to probing and exploration and to the recognition of the language forms. The young today reject goals. They want roles-R-O-L-E-S. That is, total involvement.They do not want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs." pg 100 Even though this book was written in 1967, I still feel like this quote rings true. As a nation mostly, since the children he is talking of in this section are grown with children and possible grand-children of their own, I feel like this is what we strive to do. We want a section to call our own in this society and world that is specifically ours; a role that is ours and tat no one else can take from us. In wanting this, the way that we learn needs to change. We need to be allowed to explore the limits of ourselves to know what we can and cannot do; our need to not fit into a mold something that has been driven into us from around when this book was written to now. "The eye-it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where'er they be, against or with our will." - Wordsworth pg 44 This quote by Wordsworth in McLuhan is saying that life happens and we do not always have full control. There are things our eyes will see that we do not always decide. Our senses are here to guide us but they go beyond what our brain can always comprehend or decide upon. QuotesCategory:Quotes "Our 'Age of Anxiety' is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools- with yesterday's concepts."pg 8-9 "Youth instinctively understands the present environment-the electric drama."pg 9 "Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow. Growing up-that is our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice."pg 18 "A new form of "politics" is emerging and in ways we haven't noticed yet. The living room has become a voting booth."pg 22 "Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other."pg 24 "There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."pg 25 "All Media are extensions of some human faculty- psychic or physical."pg 26 "All media are extensions of some human faculty-psychic or physical."pg 26 "The wheel...is an extension of the foot. The book is an extension of the eye...clothing, an extension of the skin...electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system."pg 31-40 "Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act-the way we perceive the world."pg 41 "The alphabet is a construct of fragmented bits and parts which have no semantic meaning in themselves and which must be strung together in a line, bead-like, and in prescribed order."pg 44 "Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog."pg 48 "A world of total involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore."pg 61 "Print technology created the public. Electric Technology created the mass." pg 68 "Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old." pg 94 "Education must shift from instruction, from imposing of stencils, the discovery-to probing and exploration and to the recognition of the language of forms. The young today reject goals. The want roles-R-O-L-E-S.That is, total involvement. They do not want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs."pg 100 "When you consider television's awesome power to educate, aren't you thankful it doesn't?" pg 128 "I must have been delirious, for even I sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents towards the foam below." pg 153 '''Questions asked by the author' "How shall the new environment be programmed now that we have become so involved with each other, now that all of us have become the unwitting work force for social change?" pg 12 Questions for the reader to consider: McLuhan wrote ''The Medium is the Massage ''nearly fifty years ago, how accurately do you feel it portrays modern understandings of media?